Utilization of renewable energies for sustainable accelerator operation at KIT

The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology operates the accelerator test facility Karlsruhe Research Accelerator, which also provides synchrotron radiation at 2.5 GeV. Roughly one third of the wall-plug power is used for cooling. Optimizing the infrastructure for cooling has a huge impact on the overall sustainability. To reduce the environmental impact a thermal well system was installed. It reduces the base heat load by eliminating one of three 500 kW cooling units. This paper describes the challenges, such as iron-manganese rich groundwater, and their solution for our 1 MW passive cooling system. The average energy consumption of 28 kW for the thermal well infrastructure is compensated by a new 540 kWp solar power plant. This paper elaborates on the commissioning of the wells and shows the first results of this overall sustainable cooling concept.